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Knuckle of Veal Stewed with Rice

A stew of veal knuckle and rice, served with bacon, parsnips or greens, and parsley butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Parsnip and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 484 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Knuckle of Veal Stewed with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut off some steaks from the knuckle of veal, leaving it small enough to eat in one day.

  2. Break the shank bone and wash it clean.

Make the stew

  1. Place the bone in a large stew pan with water, onion, mace, and salt.

  2. Set the pan on high heat and remove any scum when it boils.

  3. Wash and pick the rice, then add it to the stew pan with the meat.

  4. Let it stew gently for about 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat in a deep dish with rice around it.

  2. Accompany with bacon, parsnips or greens, and finely minced parsley mixed with butter.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsnip + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + parsniptop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Rice + parsniptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckle
Provides the meat and, with the bone, flavour and body to the broth during slow stewing.
Rice
Absorbs liquid as it cooks, thickening the stew and adding a starchy, filling texture.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Removing the scum after boiling. Scum is coagulated proteins and impurities that rise when the liquid first boils. Skimming it keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting before the long gentle simmer.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, rice, parsnip, parsley, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, rice, parsnip, parsley, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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